It’s not just the economy of Cambridge that has benefited from hosting the innovation center of Kendall Square, but that of the entire state, and the attacks on science and slashing of research funds during this second term of president Donald Trump has shaken the gleaming towers of labs and offices to their foundations. It might look smart that governor Maura Healey launched last year an initiative for Massachusetts called Shield, which as a “Strategic Hub for Innovation, Exchange and Leadership in Defense” commits $47 million to support military innovation, grow microelectronics and chips manufacturing and serve as a vehicle for job creation. The average Cantabrigian might be shocked at what’s resulting from the actions of Trump and Healey in Kendall.
We talked about that with a regular observer of Kendall Square: Theodora Skeadas, an expert in responsible tech. Since graduating from Harvard College and then the Kennedy School, she has worked in – to name just a few of her credits – national security with federal government agencies, elections policies with Microsoft and as a project manager for trust and safety at Twitter until its purchase by Elon Musk. She was executive director of the small-business organization Cambridge Local First for more than five years and remains a Cambridge resident in her roles working at the intersection of community policy and the impact of technology such as artificial intelligence.
The conversation sprang from Skeadas’ attending two events that said much about the Kendall Square of 2026. The first, held March 5 at the Venture Cafe in the Cambridge Innovation Center, was a series of pitches by representatives of European nations that, instead of staying in Cambridge, our best and brightest should “Choose Europe for Science & Innovation.” The second was the fifth annual military-focused Technology & National Security Conference, held Friday and Saturday by and for MIT and Harvard students. “Acta non verba,” the conference website urges – “deeds, not words.”
If that’s not clear enough, the website names the point of the conference in italicized uppercase letters: “Innovating for the Frontlines.”
“A lot has been happening in Kendall Square,” Skeadas said. The conversation follows, edited and condensed for publication.
What brings you to Kendall Square so much?
I facilitate a group of responsible tech practitioners, and we share local events with each other. I love to attend these events, because I learn so much about technology changes, political trends and other evolving conversations. Kendall Square is a hub of innovation, and a lot of practitioners and researchers are based in the area, so it attracts diverse stakeholders.
Does Kendall feel different to you now than it did a few years ago?
Yes. The reduced funding to life sciences efforts has really impacted the vitality of the neighborhood. It’s made it harder for organizations to do their work. There have been lots of layoffs. And of course, MIT has been influenced as well, as well as Harvard. All of us are going through a bit of a reckoning when it comes to resource allocation and investment. I don’t work in the life sciences space, but my observation is that folks have been laid off and are reimagining their priorities, and that organizations have been downsizing or maybe even closing.
Are people optimistic, cynical, glum, excited?
Everybody’s a little apprehensive. Layoffs are now a permanent fixture of employment whether in industry or university contexts, civil society and now in government. Ecosystems that we thought were stable places of employment have proven themselves to be unstable. Automation and AI challenges that even further.
You attended a couple of events in Kendall Square recently.
These were back to back. In “Choose Europe for Science & Innovation,” consulates from across the Boston area representing a number of European countries – including the European Union, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom – presented themselves to the researchers, Ph.D. students, academics and job seekers to pitch why their countries were viable places for employment and residency. It was funny, one of the presenters framed it as “like a Eurovision for science and technology,” and some were decked out in their nation’s traditional attire. I’ve been to a lot of job fairs over the course of my life, but a job fair organized by European consulates in Boston to attract tech and science research talent to the European region for a brain drain is new. The room was standing-room-only and very high energy. The Europeans were very excited, and people were really receptive to job opportunities and research opportunities, but also the idea that a lot of these countries pitched around great work-life balance.
And the other?
The second took place just Saturday and was organized by students at the MIT Sloan and Harvard Business schools – a technology and national security conference focused on cutting-edge technologies that are being deployed in national security and warfighting contexts. In the event’s first year, 2023, they had about 100 attendees. The past two years, as I understand it, has sold out at about 1,200 people.
The conversations focused on issues of energy security, supply chain, public-private investments for national resiliency, tech for the Arctic region, Pacific deterrence, quantum systems, advanced manufacturing, acquisition reform, venture capital, AI on the modern frontline. Space, drones, autonomy, economic security, border security in the Americas and biological warfare. There was a panel on the state of defense technology in Massachusetts and broader conversations about, for example, Ukraine as a battlefield lab and the ongoing war in the Middle East and what this tells us about the new era of conflict. Very interesting conversations, and an exhibition hall and innovation showcase pitch competition.
Just like the previous event, this is a hard job market and this was a compelling event to job seekers. This is one of the few environments that’s very clearly expanding, while other environments are contracting.
To what degree is national security a straight swap for the biotech that has left Kendall Square?
It’s not a one-for-one. There are many organizations thinking about how they can make a pivot.
What’s grabbing at me is the thought that Kendall Square, writ large, has recently been about advancements in human health. Now it’s talking about fighting wars.
The link, which I don’t necessarily endorse but could see a framing made, is that both of these roles are about helping people. The conference was pitched as about supporting war fighters who are trying to fight good, just wars. Examples were made to folks fighting Isis in Northern Iraq – that was the starting pitch by the opening speaker. Help your country. Help your fellow war fighter. There’s also a clear parallel around biosecurity in particular, guarding against disease outbreaks and guarding against biological weapons. There’s science in weaponry, and that is a very direct connection. One of the panels at the conference focused on biological weapons.
How much of this seemed about offensive weapons versus defensive measures?
That’s a false dichotomy, like how Donald Trump just renamed the Department of Defense as the Department of War. The vast majority of offensive weaponry can be used as defensive weaponry. The distinction is not so clear. Drone technology and antidrone technology are both about drones. Trump at least in part articulated the war with Iran as one of protecting Americans. Technologies can span those environments.
Were there technologies discussed that the mass of Americans are unaware of?
I think most Americans are not aware that we are on the precipice of a quantum revolution. The ways in which the jamming of GPS has been a big problem is eye-opening. I didn’t attend the panel on it, but a lot of Americans may not be thinking about the rising militarization of the Arctic region because of declining ice coverage because of warming temperatures. The Arctic is a lot more navigable than it was, and as a result, is being super militarized. A panel about fighting in space touched a little bit on vulnerabilities in the current space posture, but supply chain and procurement were big issues, as well as maneuvering the regulatory environment. Panelists talked about China’s increased investment in in space, and ways to push the American advantage: diversifying the supplier base, increasing competition, more certainty around architecture like the Golden Dome. Lunar permanence was discussed, and even logistical things like health care out in space.
“Lunar permanence”?
Yes, the goal of establishing a continuous, sustained human presence on the moon, rather than short visits. Blue Origin was at the conference, and its goal is to establish a permanent human presence on the moon. One of the companies was looking at generating reliable clean energy from deep sea and deep space. Some of these companies don’t have an explicitly military goal, but they play into a larger geopolitical landscape that is increasingly a securitized or militarized one.
Did this all feel like national security is Kendall Square’s play because AI is taking place elsewhere?
It makes sense that the AI revolution is rooted in Silicon Valley, which is about computers, algorithms, software. The people who do work in quantum, they’re not software engineers, they’re physicists, and so Cambridge is a very natural home for the quantum revolution. It’s not just reactive.
Was there explicit or implicit discussion – or purposefully not – of the moral and ethical ramifications of a Kendall Square focused on national security and war fighting?
I can answer that question definitively. There was one question that I observed that got asked about this: What is the moral hazard when government is both an investor and a market regulator? The responses, I think, didn’t quite answer the question, and that was really the closest we got to discussions of moral and ethical ramifications. There were a lot of fundamental questions that I wish had been addressed, like why is the U.S. involved in some of these foreign conflicts? Does the deployment of these advanced technologies end conflict sooner and save lives, or does it prolong conflict and produce unnecessary noncombatant fatalities? How do we define foreign adversaries and friends? What are the U.S.’ strategic goals when it comes to foreign policy? There were some hints of that discussion in the conversation on war in the Middle East, but we could have delved deeper.
On the one hand, if Kendall Square is pivoting in a changed environment – if we’re not getting the biotech dollars, let’s get the national security dollars – it can pivot again. But the pessimist in me worries that companies involved in national security will support an ongoing national security environment that enriches it. We’ve had warnings at least back to Eisenhower about a military-industrial complex.
Well, one thing we haven’t talked about is the fact that increasingly, we’re seeing foreign surveillance technology deployed domestically by an administration that is explicitly adversarial to nonviolent protesters and uses language like “terrorist” to describe them. It’s concerning that we have a federal administration that does not seem to take issue with redeploying very invasive technology domestically against its own citizenry. People here can do really great things and build technology that, in a vacuum, is deeply impressive, but when you apply it in context, the human ramifications can be significant. If we’re divorcing conversations of technologies’ development from ethical conversations about how it gets deployed and the human and environmental cost, I find that very concerning. It’s a great workforce development strategy, but it can’t be divorced from the larger conversation.
Protesters seemed to chase one company, Elbit, out of Cambridge in 2024 because it was seen as helping Israel fight its wars. The same protesters would face a challenge taking down much of Kendall Square.
Here already, we’re seeing protests against companies such as Palantir and others partnering with the U.S. Department of Defense – now the Department of War. The exchange with Anthropic and then OpenAI in recent weeks with the Department of War is indicative that people, protesters, activists, are broadening their critical approaches to U.S.-based organizations.
The juxtaposition of events makes it seem like the options are to go to another country and do science you can feel one way about, or stay in Kendall and build machineries of war.
[laughs] That is, in fact, the takeaway. We know students at universities in Cambridge and across Massachusetts and the U.S. feel very disoriented and overwhelmed by the lack of options they perceive. A lot of the more traditional paths have been reduced, and even students at extremely privileged universities like Harvard and MIT are having a very hard time getting a job. I host conversations on pathways into responsible tech and AI, and the stories I’m hearing from students or recent grads or just from professionals generally – it’s very daunting, very hard. There’s a kind of anxiety that’s emerging about how they can find their footing in this workforce that’s rapidly evolving under difficult political pressure, geopolitical pressure and now automation. Part of why these events were so well attended was that they offer very clear but different pathways to potentially meaningful employment. I had seen these as disparate conversations. I now see them as linked. They were two different kinds of job fairs.
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